FINAL – Kings 2, Avalanche 4 – Kempe, Foegele, Hiller

The LA Kings were unable to build on a strong start as they allowed three unanswered goals in a 4-2 defeat against the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday evening at Ball Arena.

The Kings couldn’t have asked for a much better start than they got, as forward Adrian Kempe opened the scoring just 32 seconds into the game. On the first shift of the night, Kempe shot from the goal line, creating a difficult to locate rebound in the crease, and the Swedish forward drove the net and buried on the second look for his sixth goal of the season and a 1-0 advantage. With the secondary assist, forward Trevor Moore extended his scoring streak to seven games, tied for the fourth-longest active streak in the NHL.

Just over three minutes later, Colorado pulled level as their top forward line returned serve. Forward Mikko Rantanen used his size to create a bit of room for himself in the slot and following a Darcy Kuemper save, the rebound fell to forward Artturi Lehkonen in the low slot, where he buried his third goal in five games played this season to tie the game at one goal apiece.

With just over four minutes to play in the opening period, Kempe struck again to put the Kings ahead 2-1 heading into the first intermission. Moore went behind the net to retrieve a puck down low and worked it towards the middle, with a touch pass to center Anze Kopitar. The captain then found Kempe alone at the back post, where he buried his second goal of the game.

The Avalanche scored the lone goal of the middle stanza, as a part of a second period that saw the hosts control a 13-0 advantage in shots on goal, to send the game into the second intermission tied at two. Defenseman Cale Makar hit Rantanen with a stretch pass, as the Finnish winger got in behind Kings defenseman Jordan Spence. Rantanen used his strength to gain an edge and snapped his shot past Kuemper on the blocker side to even the score.

Early in the third period, goaltender Darcy Kuemper left the game with an apparent injury, with goaltender David Rittich entering the game in relief.

Just past the halfway point of the third period, Rantanen made it 3-2 with his second goal and third point of the evening. With space in the slot, Rantanen shot five hole, past Rittich and in, to put the hosts on top for the first time in the game. Forwards Nathan MacKinnon and Logan O’Connor tallied the assists on the play, MacKinnon’s second pointy of the night.

Rantanen completed his hat trick late in the third period with the empty-net goal, icing the game at 4-2.

Hear from Kempe, forward Warren Foegele and Head Coach Jim Hiller following tonight’s game.

Adrian Kempe

Warren Foegele
On what happened in the final 40 after a strong first period
We had a great start, Juice’s line gets one first shift and puts us in a good position and I thought for the remainder of the first period, we were playing aggressive, on our toes. In the second, we kind of got away from that. It felt like we were honestly respecting their top guys so much that we kind of got away from doing what we do best as well. We’ve got to be aware when they’re out there, but at the same time, we’ve got to do what we do to be successful. That’s getting pucks on net, checking hard and playing more aggressive.

On if it felt like a snowball of momentum once Colorado got going
Honestly, it wasn’t for Darce in that second period, it could have been much uglier. When you’re constantly playing defense, it wears on you, right? So, we want to do that to other teams to try to wear them out and we just didn’t do that for the whole game.

On what he felt like the group could have done more of, to get back on track
Probably just keep it simpler. I think a bunch of us, including myself, are maybe passing too much, getting pucks on net creates chaos, it creates rebounds. I don’t know in the second period how many shots we had, maybe one or two, it didn’t seem like a lot, so kind of going back to the fundamentals and just keeping it simple.

On a positive from tonight being the performance of the PK unit
That’s a hard power play over there, so credit to the group, everyone’s digging in doing their job. The penalty kill, power play special teams is a big part of the game. So, like you said, that’s a positive, but we’ll go home and regroup.

Jim Hiller
On the contrast between the first period and the final 40 minutes
They pushed and we didn’t do a very good job of handling that. I thought, for whatever reasons, once we got into the second period, we had a really tough time connecting on passes, turning pucks over because we just couldn’t get ourselves out of the d-zone. Then, the 29-line spent some time in our end and we had a tough time with it.

On if he felt the Kings showed their big players too much respect at times
I think they’ve earned some respect, those guys. We just had to play them harder, make them play in their own end and that’s what we did in the first period. That line ended up playing in their own zone a little bit. They were probably weren’t very happy with that, they came and pushed and when they put the five guys out there, it’s pretty tough to contain them. You’ve got to do a really good job, you can’t turn pucks over, you have to break out clean. To give yourself a chance, you’ve got to make them spend some time in their own time in their own zone and we didn’t do that in the second half of the game.

On if it felt like Colorado momentum snowballed to where the Kings couldn’t get back on track
Yeah, I mean clearly. In the second period, we had no shots on that, Kevin had his breakaway, we had a couple other opportunities to put it on the net and couldn’t do it. They hemmed us in pretty good.

On the performance of the penalty kill against a top opposing power play
The first period was really good. I thought that gave us a boo actually, because we did such a good job, we were on our toes and we continued that 5-on-5. Just couldn’t get any momentum after that.

Hiller did not have an update on Darcy Kuemper’s status following the game, after Kuemper left with an apparent injury early in the third period. Defenseman Caleb Jones left the game with an upper-body injury, per Hiller, and did not return.

Notes –
• Forward Adrian Kempe (2-0=2) struck twice in the first period, notching his sixth and seventh goals of the campaign as part of his team-leading seventh multi-point performance through 18 games.
• Forward Trevor Moore (0-2=2) notched a pair of assists to further extend his career-long point streak (2-7=9) to a seventh consecutive contest. The helpers marked Moore’s 99th and 100th assists as a member of the Kings, making him the 12th undrafted skater to record 100 helpers for the franchise.
• Forward Anze Kopitar (0-2=2) picked up his 14th and 15th assists of the season to mark five points (0-5=5) over his last three visits to Colorado, and his ninth and 10th points in his last six games against the Avalanche (0-10=10), both dating back to March 9, 2023.
• The assists marked Kopitar’s 1,230th and 1,231st career points (424-807=1,231), passing Norm Ullman (490- 739=1,229) for the 44th-most points in league history.
• Kopitar’s 45 career assists against the Avalanche is the most among all active skaters, and is tied with Adam Oates for the 12th-most in League history.
• Per NHL PR, Kopitar also passed Mats Sundin (149) for the 11th-most multi-assist games by a player born outside of North America. The only active player with at least 150 multi-assist outings is Evgeni Malkin (166).
• With his two assists, Kopitar has now tallied 16 career multi-point games against Colorado, breaking a three-way tie with Luc Robitaille (15) and Marcel Dionne (15) for the most such games against the Avalanche in franchise history.
• Tonight’s contest marked Kopitar’s 1,391st career game, tying Doug Mohns for the 45th-most games played in league history. Kopitar also skated in his 31st career road game against Colorado, breaking a three-way tie with Patrick Kane (30GP) and Marc-Edouard Vlasic (30GP) for sole possession of the third-most road games played against the Avalanche by an active skater.
• The Kings had zero shots on goal in the second period tonight, the first time since March 31, 2011 that the Kings failed to record a shot on goal in a period.

The Kings have a scheduled day off tomorrow and will return to the ice for practice on Friday, November 15 at Toyota Sports Performance Center in El Segundo.